Question
Robert Stepp
Related to salt, how much salt should be added to cook whole-wheat pasta? Does it matter whether it is coarse or fine grain (I suspect it does.)?
Answer
With salt, this is kind of funny 'cause this is one of the areas in salt that I'm a firm believer that you get more flavor cooking pasta when your water is well salted. And that comes from a lot of back and forth on different things. But I do, well salt my water, but while I'm cooking pasta in it, does that add salt content to my pasta? Of course it does. Um, so there isn't a specific amount of salt that I would say to be able to put into it. A lot of people say your water should taste like the ocean. That's a bit much for me, for me to say like eight to 10 cups of water, I might put a tablespoon, um, of salt in. And for me that's a lot of salt, a tablespoon. Um, and that works out really well and just gives another, uh, added dynamic to the flavor of that. Now that's to the water if you're talking about, to be able to put it on the, the whole wheat pasta, um, you know, as it's after you you boiled it and stuff like that, that's a different thing. And that's just kind of a personal preference. Um, in fact both, both ways are a personal preference, but I do like to heavily salt my water, um, you know, and uh, as I'm cooking pasta to be able to get a big flavor, uh, coarse versus non, um, you know, it's probably gonna come out the same way 'cause it's basically absorbing all of that water into it. I also for, um, you know, depending on the noodle, sometimes cook, uh, my noodles in a vegetable stock too, to be able to add big flavor. When I'm doing that, I don't actually add salt to it at all because it has such a big flavor on it, just on its own. I'll typically reuse the, the, uh, vegetable stock in, um, make it into a soup 'cause then it has some more depth to it, getting some of the, uh, the pasta, um, uh, out of that as well too.
